Cawnpore

by George Otto Trevelyan

To us, who from the standing-point of complete and certain knowledge look back upon that March and April pregnant with a great and sombre future, it seems indeed miraculous that our countrymen then resident in India should not have entertained a suspicion of what those months would bring forth. It appears incredible that the officers should have lived their ordinary lives; hunting; dining; dancing; speculating on the probable height of the thermometer, and the possible chances of promotion; while within a few yards of their quarters the men were debating the programme of the coming mutiny; arranging who was to shoot down the adjutant, and who was to fire the thatch of the colonel's bungalow; discussing their hopes of assistance from Gwalior, Nepaul, and St. Petersburg. Can it be believed that morning after morning our countrymen looked down the row of dark faces and gleaming eyes, and never dreamed that in all that array, so fair and orderly to view, any heart beat with a loftier ambition than could be satisfied by a stripe or an epaulette; with a deadlier malice than might be gratified by the disappointment of some rival in the good opinion of the soubahdar? And yet, so it was. In spite of all that was said and written concerning the childlike docility of the affectionate sepoy, confidence and regard did not exist between the officer and the soldier. That the case had once been far otherwise was acknowledged on all sides; and the change was noted by military men of the old school with regret, qualified by a slight tincture of self-satisfaction. Young subalterns retorted that the ancient intimacy between superior and inferior was connected with the loose habits which disgraced Anglo-Indian society in days gone by, when the soldier pandared to the vices of his officer, or, at any rate, was cognisant of their existence. Those who have studied cause and effect will be slow to accept the theory that this estrangement between the mess-room and the lines was in any great measure due to the increased morality of the Indian army.

The root of the evil lay in the withdrawal of officers from regimental duty for employment on the staff and in the civil posts; a custom so dear to all who bore the great and time-honoured names, which had been conspicuous in the Court of Directors and at the Calcutta Council-board as far back as the time of Barwell and Warren Hastings. And yet, though family interest received due consideration from those who dispensed the good things of the service, it was unfortunate for the efficiency of the Bengal army that merit did not go without a share in the loaves and fishes. A young man on the threshold of his profession was recommended by his father, and entreated by his sisters, skilled like all Anglo-Indian ladies in the inscrutable mysteries of official success, to get away from his regiment as early as possible. The teaching of his relations was enforced by the golden words which dropped from the lips of the Chairman of the Honourable Court, when, on the prize-day at Addiscombe, the lad stood forth blushing with modest pride, the Pollock medal in his hand, the sword of honour under his arm, and a pile of military histories, emblazoned with the arms of the academy, on the table before him. After his arrival on Indian shores, the same advice was impressed upon him by his uncle the Sudder judge, his cousin the junior secretary, and his school-chum the probationary-sub-assistant-commissary-general.

Rich were the prizes open to the aspiring cadet:—rich, but far from rare. There were the political agencies at the courts of Holkar and Scindiah; at the seats of the ancient and romantic dynasties of Rajpootana; at that European station whence, in dangerous proximity, an English resident still watches with anxious glance the intrigues and feuds which agitate the nest of Arab and Rohilla cut-throats, who protect and terrify the Nizam of Hyderabad. There were the Deputy Commissionerships of Oude and the Punjaub, whose occupants enjoyed a salary almost equal to that of a Collector in the more settled provinces, with a far greater share of power and responsibility. There were the posts in the branches of administration more exclusively military: the Departments of the Adjutant-General, the Quarter-Master-General, the Commissary-General, and the Judge-Advocate-General. Finally, there were the numerous irregular corps in the Deccan and on the North-west Frontier, to each of which were attached some three or four captains and subalterns, who fully appreciated the increase of their pay, and the excitement afforded by their critical and interesting duties. In short, appointments which enabled officers to make money and reputation faster than was possible for their less fortunate brethren who remained in the line were so numerous that, after family claims had been satisfied, the surplus sufficed to absorb all the most promising and pushing youngsters in the Bengal Military service.

It was not only that this system drained the army of individual zeal and talent. The professional spirit of the mass could not thrive under so blighting an influence. The officers present with the corps gradually ceased to take pride in the conscientious performance of their regimental duties; for their employment upon those duties was a standing proof that they were wanting in ability and high official connexion. It was very difficult to throw much energy and enthusiasm into such work as escorting treasure, guarding jails, inspecting the cross-belts and listening to the grievances of sepoys, while a junior lieutenant in the same battalion was coercing refractory Rajahs, or scouring the border at the head of five hundred wild Pathan horsemen. What wonder if, under these circumstances, men became sick at heart? Disgusted at their position, they no longer made the welfare and happiness of their soldiers an all-important object: and neglect often deepened into aversion and contempt. The cadets, as was only too natural, caught the prevailing tone. Young men fresh from home are so shocked at the apparent deficiency of the Hindoo character of manliness, honesty, and self-respect, the qualities which Englishmen most regard, that, so to speak, their better impulses are apt to render them careless of the rights and sentiments of the native population. "Do I not well to be insolent?" is a question asked daily, in a more or less logical form, by the majority of our countrymen in India. It requires a larger stock of philosophy than generally falls to the share of a lad of nineteen in a new red coat, with his first month's pay in the pocket, to realize the conviction that an imperial people, who undertake to govern others, must first govern themselves; and that it is the height of folly and cruelty to subjugate a hundred millions of men, and then abuse them because they are as God made them, and not as we would fain have them.

And so it came to pass that to be sent back to head-quarters was "a shame," regimental duty was "a bore," and the sepoys were "niggers." That hateful word, which is now constantly on the tongue of all Anglo-Indians except civilians and missionaries, made its first appearance in decent society during the years which immediately preceded the mutiny. The immorality of the term is only equalled by the absurdity. To call the inhabitants of Hindostan "niggers," is just as unreasonable as it would be for Austrian officials to designate the subject populations of Venetia and Hungary by the collective title of "serfs." In the eyes of an English planter, or railway-contractor, there is no distinction of race or rank. Khoonds and Punjabees, Pariahs and Coolin Brahmins, bazaar-porters and Rajahs with a rent-roll of half a million, and a genealogy longer than that of Howards and Stanleys, are "niggers" alike, one and all, with the prefix of that profane epithet, which has been the Shibboleth of the Englishmen abroad since the days of Philip de Comines. And so, in a Bengal corps,—whether he were a grey-bearded Mahomedan soubahdar, the arbiter and exponent of regimental custom and tradition, or the high-caste Rajpoot, or a Sikh veteran marked with the scars of Sobraon,—every man knew well that he was dubbed "nigger" by some slip of an ensign, who could not tell his right hand from his left in any Oriental language. In such an atmosphere how could mutual attachment exist, or mutual confidence? How could there not exist dislike and disaffection; the bitterness of injured pride, and of feelings misunderstood or heedlessly contemned?

There were usually some eight or nine officers actually doing duty with a battalion. A colonel and doctor, three or four captains and lieutenants, and three or four ensigns, formed what was in those days considered to be a very respectable complement. The other members of the mess were far away from head-quarters, inditing minutes at Calcutta, deciding suits in some distant non-regulation province, or tracking the course of the Nile through the deserts of Nubia. Such, however, was not universally the case. Here and there might be found a corps where the regimental tone (that unwritten and impalpable law, not passed in words, nor enforced by overt penalties, but obeyed in silence and without question), had ordained that staff employment was not a legitimate object of ambition. The officers plumed themselves upon keeping all together, and rising one with another in the ordinary course of promotion. They shot tigers, and speared hogs, and played whist and billiards, and meanwhile looked well after their companies, and contrived to know something about the private history and character of every man under their command. They voted it unfashionable to attempt the pass examination in Hindoostanee, success in which was an indispensable qualification for the staff: an ordeal familiarly known as the P.H.; that pair of consonants which are seldom far from the lips, and never out of the thoughts, of the more aspiring subalterns of the Bengal army. And yet, averse as they were to grammars and dictionaries, these men spoke the vernacular languages with rare facility. But not even to such officers as these was breathed a syllable of that fearful secret, which England would have cheaply bought at the price of a million pounds for a single letter. Their soldiers entertained towards them a strong and genuine regard. It was not among the ranks which they commanded that the spirit of sedition was born and nurtured. But in the day of wrath there was no distinction of person. When the baneful sirocco of mutiny, called by the imaginative Hindoo "the Devil's Wind," was abroad in the air, all milder influences yielded before its withering blast. The consciousness of the authority of the "Fouj ki Bheera," or "general will of the army," was to individual men, or regiments, almost irresistible. Some troopers in Fisher's Irregular Cavalry performed a signal act of gallantry at Lucknow, during the early days of the outbreak, for which they received a handsome reward. While waiting for their money in the verandah of the commissioner's house, they fell into conversation with certain of their fellow-villagers among his servants. "We like our colonel," said they, "and will not allow him to be harmed; but, if the whole army turns, we must turn too." A week elapsed, and these men looked quietly on from their saddles, while Colonel Fisher was shot to death by a scoundrel in the lines of the military police. Then they threw aside all semblance of discipline; murdered the second in command; and shouted to the adjutant, who was a general favourite, to ride and begone, if he desired to spare them the pain of taking his life. At one large station the men were in open mutiny, and the officers had grouped themselves in front of the battalion, expecting every moment the fatal volley. They agreed, however, not to abandon hope until they had witnessed the effect produced by the presence of a captain of old standing in the service, who was apparently loved and trusted by the whole regiment, and especially by the grenadier company, to which he had been attached for many years. When his approach was announced, every eye turned towards his bungalow, which stood on the parade-ground, close to that flank where the grenadiers were stationed. He had not gone ten paces down the line before he fell dead, pierced by a bullet from the ranks of his own command.

In every regiment there was a Soubahdar major, or native colonel; and in every company a Soubahdar, who answered to a European captain, and a Jemmadar, who answered to a European subaltern. These were the commissioned officers, who wore swords and sashes, sat on a court-martial, and were saluted by the rank and file. They had one and all carried the musket, and there was no approach to friendship or even to familiar intercourse between them and their Saxon brethren in arms, who considered that, if they offered their soubahdar a chair during an interview on regimental business, quite enough had been done to mark the difference between a commissioned and a non-commissioned sepoy. The sergeant and the corporal were represented by the havildar and the naick; titles which make the list of killed and wounded in Indian battles so bewildering to an English reader. Thus the Brahmin battalion had a complete outfit of Brahmin officers; and this it was that rendered the rebellious army so terribly efficient for evil. When every Englishman in a corps had been murdered or scared away, the organization none the less remained intact. The regiment was still a military machine finished in every part, compact, flexible, and capable as ever of a great and sustained exertion of strength and courage. This imperfect, but, it is to be feared, tedious sketch of the composition of our native force, as it existed before the mutiny, may well be closed with the oracular words of Sir Charles Napier, the Cassandra of the old Bengal army: "Your young, independent, wild cadet, will some day find the Indian army taken out of his hands by the soubahdars. They are steady, respectful, thoughtful, stern-looking men; very zealous and military: the sole instructors of all our soldiers."

The native town of Cawnpore contained sixty thousand inhabitants. It possessed no architectural beauties worthy to detain the traveller who, from those stately landing-places whence rise, tier above tier, the shrines and palaces of Benares, was hurrying on towards the ineffable glories of Agra. The most remarkable feature was a spacious boulevard, more than a hundred feet in breadth, called the Chandnee Choke, or street of silver. This name, common to the principal avenue in all the great cities of the north west, is a monument of the days of bad government and a primitive commercial system. When banks were few and robbers bold and numerous, men preferred to have some part of their wealth about their persons and in a portable form. A minister at a native court, however rich the harvest he might gather in during the fitful sunshine of royal favour, thought it well to keep a handful of diamonds and rubies in his girdle, as a provision against the day of disgrace and flight. Now, by the help of a bill of exchange and a single trusty agent, he may store up his gains in European stocks and debentures far out of reach of the greediest Nizam or the neediest Maharaja. In like manner, in old times, farmers and shopkeepers were wont to convert their superfluous rupees into ornaments of fantastic design for themselves, their wives, and their children. The unceasing flow of silver towards the east, which affords to political economists a constant sensation of pleasing bewilderment, is attributed in part to the fact that the Indian peasant still continues to invest his earnings on the wrists and ankles, the ears and noses of his family. Cawnpore was noted for the excellence and cheapness of all articles made of leather,—saddlery, boots and shoes, bottle-covers, helmets, and cheeroot-cases. The manufacture was introduced by a colony of Chinese, the frugal and industrious Lombards of India, who settled in the Bazaar many years ago. A subaltern could buy a set of harness for his buggy at something under three pounds, and thoroughly equip his hack for half that sum: and, if he was not very particular about shape and colour, he might pick up a serviceable country-bred horse for a hundred rupee note.

The city had an evil reputation. Situated on the frontier of two distinct jurisdictions, it swarmed with rascals from Oude, on their way to seek obscurity in British territory, and rascals from our north-west provinces, on their way to seek impunity in the dominions of the Nawab. Oonao, the half-way house on the road which led from Cawnpore to Lucknow, gave a name to a class of murders of peculiar atrocity. On and about that highway were constantly found the dead bodies of travellers: sepoys, for the most part, returning to their villages with their savings and the voucher for their pension. In most cases a rope was drawn tightly round the neck: but the surgeons who conducted the inquests gradually came to be of opinion that the victims had been poisoned, or, at any rate, stupefied, by being induced to smoke tobacco mixed with a noxious drug. The police exerted themselves in vain to obtain a clue to the mystery. Whenever a fresh officer of note was appointed to the district, the murderers made a point of presenting him with a "nuzzur," or "offering," in the shape of a larger than usual batch of corpses. The difficulty of detection was increased by an odious custom well known to all Anglo-Indian magistrates, which here flourished with extraordinary vigour. A malicious Hindoo will deliberately mangle the body of a person who has died from a natural cause, and fling it on the ground of some neighbour to whom the scamp may happen to bear a grudge. The unfortunate recipient finds himself involved in the consequences dreaded by the poor people in the Arabian Nights, when the hunchback was choked by a fishbone beneath their hospitable roof.

Bajee Rao, the Peishwa of Poonah, was the last monarch of one of those great Mahratta dynasties which long shared the sovereignty of the Central Highlands and the plunder of all Hindostan. So near a neighbour could not fail to be guilty of the amount of "treachery," "faithlessness," and "bad internal government," necessary to justify the annexation of his dominions. Urged by that painful necessity of taking what belongs to others, which is the inevitable result of all our dealings with Oriental powers, we dethroned Bajee Rao, confiscated his territories, and assigned him a residence at Bithoor, a small town twelve miles up the river from Cawnpore. Here he lived until his death in princely state, inasmuch as the Company always behaved with great generosity towards the princes whom it had plundered, after the manner of those open-handed thieves of fiction who fling back a couple of broad pieces to the traveller whom they have eased of his purse and watch. Bithoor was pleasantly situated upon the banks of the sacred stream, and was peculiarly suited to be the Saint Juste in which a retired Brahmin ruler might be content to end his days; for the spot was held in singular favour by Brahma. Here, after the creation had been accomplished, the deity had sacrificed a hecatomb, in token that his great work was good. The pin which fastened the divine sandal was picked up in after days, and inserted in the steps of the principal landing-place, where it may still be seen by the incredulous. At the full moon in November, prodigious crowds of pilgrims assemble from all parts of India to celebrate the present god with frankincense, and flowers, and barbarous music, and drunken frenzy. With his traditions and his greyhounds, his annuity of eighty thousand pounds, and his host of retainers, Bajee Rao led a splendid and not unhappy existence. But the old Mahratta had one sore trial. He had no son to inherit his possessions, perpetuate his name, and apply the torch to his funeral pyre: for the last office, so the inflexible law of his religion ordained, might be performed by none other than a filial hand. In this strait he had recourse to adoption, a ceremony which, by Hindoo law, entitles the favoured person to all the rights and privileges of an heir born of the body. His choice fell upon an individual who, according to some, was the son of a Poonah corn-merchant, while others say that he was born in great poverty at a miserable village in the vicinity of Bombay. The name of this man was Seereek Dhoondoo Punth: but the execration of mankind has found his cluster of titles too long for use, and prefers the more familiar appellation of "the Nana."